The Brentwood Beginners Workshop Part 5 of 5

Again, and I am and I am an alcoholic. For those of you who care to, please join me in opening the meeting by reciting our AA prayer. God grant me the serenity through the best of the things I cannot do. Further change in the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Well, I didn't think it would ever get here, but it did.

This is the wrap up. And to those of you faithful, hearty souls who stayed all through and try to make it all add up to something tonight. First, let me remind you, please, that anything you hear up here tonight from this podium is my opinion and my opinion only. No one speaks officially for Alcoholics Anonymous not even the book which is referred to as our only authority, but even that authority reminds you again and again that it is meant to be suggestive only. What we share with you in the definition of AA is our opinions, our convictions, our beliefs based upon our experience.

So anything that I say can be held against me, but not against AA. If you keep that in mind, then nothing I say may bother you at all. The second thing is I saw a lot of hands go up of newcomers. I hope that most of you have been here during these past weeks but to bring us up to date because there's a lot of ground to cover Let's review, a brief review so that we can all be on the same train on the same wavelength all going in the same direction tonight and all finish up at the same place. You'll recall that when I started this 5 weeks ago I've quoted from the next to the closing paragraph of the book Alcoholics Anonymous.

The sentence that says, see to it that your own house is in order. And if this is the case, then great events can come to pass for you and countless others. So we set out to see if we could build a house, a house for ourselves in which we could live And if it could be built sturdily enough, soundly enough, and have enough warmth and hospitality that maybe someday we could invite others to share it and help them find there the shelter that we have had to have from others who went before us. We started out by asking ourselves a series of questions. The number one question of the first meeting which is, in my opinion, the fundamental requirement for recovery from alcoholism, it's the basis without which there's nothing else, is what is the point of sobriety?

And, remember, we examined this at length. But the conclusion that if you're an alcoholic, the point of sobriety is life itself. It is assumed that if you have made a decision to stay sober being an alcoholic that you have chosen life rather than death. And since for you and for me sobriety is an indispensable necessity of life then that is its point. It isn't to be followed or achieved or maintained or held on to for rewards, because it can bring you fringe benefits or dividends.

It is an end in itself, an indispensable end in itself, an objective on which you can place no value in more than you could try to place the value on your life. The 2nd week, we asked ourselves the question, is it necessary to have a spiritual experience in order to maintain sobriety? And we define spiritual experience as it's set forth in the appendix to the book. And that being a slow gradual change in a person's attitude towards reality, not the sweeping religious experience or supernatural happening that many think is necessary. But what is set forth in the book that really in the great majority of all of us is what really took place that over a long period of time with a lot of effort and a lot of work became a gradual change in our reaction to the world around us, to ourselves, and to the people in our world.

With that kind of a definition of spiritual experience, you remember that technically the answer to that question then would be no. It is not necessary to have a spiritual experience, to undergo a spiritual experience in order to achieve and maintain sobriety. You don't have to be anything. You don't have to get anything. You maintain sobriety by staying away from the first string.

And in order to do that, you don't have to be virtuous. You don't have to be spiritual. You don't have to be rich. You don't have to be poor. You don't have to be anything.

There's only one thing that has to be in your mind and that is that you must value being sober more than you value being drunk. And based on that, evaluation have made a choice. However, if you extend this question and say to yourself, do you want to have a life worth staying so before? Then, remember, we stayed on that for some time and the answer to that question was obviously yes. A spiritual experience would have to be would be it there would be no other way to do it.

And then in that week we talked about the steps of AA the first five steps that put this spiritual experience into motion. The 3rd week we asked ourselves the question of what are the old ideas? The old ideas that we arrived here with, the old ideas that have brought us to the state where we have to seek help from a a power greater than ourselves and from our fellow human beings. And if you remember we discovered in that meeting and in that workshop that we really as alcoholics and our neurotics were motivated all our lives by an unholy trinity of guilt and anger and fear. And that in order to survive, in order to maintain some kind of ability to function with this kind of tension, this kind of of torment and haunting fear that we had embarked on a double pronged program of balancing a neurotic need for approval against an equally strong motivating factor of a a need to dominate.

A need to be the strongest. A need to excel, to compete, to humiliate. Now, last week we asked ourselves, well, if if this was the the trinity we served, if these were the masters that we served, if this was our desire, how did we implement these two motivations that were really wiping each other out all the time and causing the tension? Because after all, the the definition of tension is conflict. It's 2 opposing forces pulling in opposite directions that that creates tension.

And we took up what we might call the neurotic 9 the 9 little games little techniques that we thought we were putting together as a do it yourself survival kit when in fact what we were doing was slowly but surely with great intelligence and great ability and great skill slowly destroying ourselves. If I can refresh your memory so that we can now go on to tonight's subject. I don't remember in what order I gave them but they were this religion, booze, or any other chemical that can be taken to change your reaction to reality. Sex. The critic.

The martyr. The, loner. Resentments, the neurotic need for infallibility, and the neurotic need for crisis. It was quite a little chip and we examined them at length and figured out how they work and what uses we were putting them to. Now, tonight, let's assume that we've all stayed along this far.

We've all bought all of this. The obvious question is if in understanding for where I have been and what put me there, how in the hell am I gonna get out of there? There's a great line in the book that says self knowledge alone is not enough. I subscribe to this a 100%. But without self knowledge you never know what you're fighting.

You're fighting phantoms and you never know where you're going and you never know what's pulling you there. But once you get there, once you see this self knowledge, once you find it, there finally has to come a choice because this is what's behind the line in the book that many of us try to hang on to our old ideas, but the result was nil until we let go absolutely. Now why would we hang on to ideas that were killing us? The answer is very simple. In our state of mind operating under the under the motivations and the forces that were controlling us, it was clear to us with crystal clarity that this was the only way that we survived.

This is the only way that we could function. This was the only way we could get from here to there and back again. So you don't give up infictions like this easily. You don't let go of them overnight simply because somebody like me or anybody else says, you know, but these things are wrong and they're they're they're driving you down into the ground. Let go of them.

Just walk away from them and never say anything to them again and, you'll be all right. You know, just that wonderful expression that you've heard so many times in AA, which I tried for years to practice, let go and let God and I went around literally letting go except everything kept sticky. And, I kept finding it again and again and again. Now if you'll keep the New Nordic 9 in mind that we just went over, I'll try to tell you what I think and found out in my opinion that wraps this up how you can take the self same old ideas with the same talent, the same energy, the same zeal that you devoted to knocking yourself out to turn this whole thing around and instead of destroying yourself start building yourself up. I hope that by now it's clear to all of you as it finally became clear to me.

If you got it in 5 weeks, I congratulate you. Now what now what we all walk in here with that we if we boil I'll boil it all down to one thing that that that what brought us all through the doors of an a a meeting. It was the conviction that of ourselves we had no worth. Now, this was in all of our minds no matter how we acted, no matter how whether we were timid or grandiose, whether we were shy or belligerent, whether we wept or snarled, this was really what was inside of us. Of ourselves, we had no work.

We we were filled with self repremination, self abnegation, the great colossal self put down which sometimes show true, but most of the time we kept hitting. Now, but then if this is the case, then what finally becomes our objective? It's to turn this around. To turn this around and not only quit not liking ourselves, end up literally having a love affair with ourselves. I thought that this would be pretty hard to do.

I remember one time after about 3 months or 6 months really with the meter running. I one day said to my doctor, doctor, what are we doing? What are we after? What is our goal, doctor? Now very organized always and then he said, mister McGinnis, it's very simple.

We're trying to improve your self esteem. And little did I know then that I was gonna become one of his most successful patients. So let's try now to go through some of these things that that they come to 7. It's a very nice lucky number. And, some of you heard these before and I'm repeating them tonight for two reasons.

Number 1. They become more valid in my life with each passing day. And number 2, so many of you have asked me to repeat them and I don't, there's I don't see any point in trying to come up with new ones to entertain you when, these work, at least as far as I'm concerned, they work. And I'm gonna try to give them to you in the order I think that they have to be worked. At least it was the way that, because nothing ever falls into any such perfect order as you put it out in the book or in the little pamphlet or in the in the in the essay.

But, mainly, they come pretty much along this way. Now you're gonna run into your number one stumbling block. It's the number one thing that is gonna be the first rule because it's what you arrived here with. It's what kept you going for years on the darkest day or the longest night. This was really what kept you in there plugging away, and you're gonna hang on to it.

So the first rule I'm gonna give you is renounce the remorse. I remember some years ago reading in the works of a theologian who shall remain nameless this line shame is the next best thing to virtue. And I believed it. I thought, well, that's good. I'm glad I read that.

I'm glad that he promulgates this theory because I've got so much of this shame that I must be the next best thing around that you can find. I hesitate to think how much harm this kind this theory has done, but it is very widely held. If you can't be a saint, the next best thing to do is to go around killing yourself because you're not a saint. Now this this looks like a virtue. So why should you wanna let go of it?

Let's let's pick up this remorse now in our middle fingers and see so let's try to see what it's made up of. Let's see if it's this great thing that we think that we should cling to and that really makes us pretty great people because we're very, very sorry for all that we've we've been so rotten and we made all these mistakes. What is this remorse? What is this this regret? When you really look at it, it is nothing more than less than more of the anger that is turned in upon yourself.

What it is is a sense of outrage that you have failed, that you haven't been the perfect person that you thought you ought to be and that you were told you should be and that is constantly held out for you to be. How many times have you heard yourself saying, how could I do that? How could I think that? How could I be that way? What the hell's the matter with me?

It goes back to that childish thing that we talked about when you're little, little, tiny, tiny, tiny and the figures of authority in our childhood, the giants that shaped and mold us kept saying you've got to be better. Do it better. Do it better. Do it better. You can be better if you just try.

You can be better if you just try. So it's the same thing turned in on us again. The remarks, the regret, the sense of outrage that we have failed. It's really nothing more nor less than pride turned against us. And when you look at it this way then you see it for the neurotic thing that it is.

You realize that it is a further handicap. And you see the trouble with this kind of thing when after you thought it all over and you real realized and felt how terrible you have been and you have feel so sorry about it and you're so filled with remorse and regret. What is the logical thing to do? Well, the logical thing to do is to go out and celebrate this by being more guilty. Get some more things done.

You know? Do some more things that you can feel more remorseful for. In this way, we keep it going. We never did get around to changing. We don't have to.

We can just go along feeling sorry. Besides this keeps giving all of our friends and all of our family and all of our relatives this wonderful out that he would be such a wonderful man if he could only find out what's wrong. But so the number one rule is renounce to be marched. Now, this leads right into the the second one that I told look at the evidence. I'm gonna try to give you examples out of my own life of of what I mean by these because that's the only way that I know.

Sometimes maybe they will not apply to you, but maybe you can adapt them to whatever, whatever it means in your your point. These old ideas that I was telling you about, they seem so logical. And the reason we cling to them is because they do seem so right. Many of them we've taught. And what makes it doubly difficult to Nearly all of them are partially true.

But, for instance, where I learned that I had to look at the evidence was and I think maybe I've mentioned this before. I arrived at AA or any other place in my life or any other difficulty with the conviction that I being a cradle member of the one true universal church that I had already had and already knew to to my fingertips all that I needed to know. I knew how to face life. I knew how to cope with it. I knew how to do everything.

Now if this couldn't work, then what the hell else was going to be found? It was obvious there couldn't be anything else so I would dismiss it. I finally had to look at the evidence. Well, what was the evidence? The evidence was that whatever was the matter it wasn't working.

That was the evidence. Either I was wrong or the religion was wrong or the way I was using it was wrong. Now I don't want to carry this forward to where all of a sudden people are interpreting that I'm giving a blanket condemnation to religion. This is I don't mean this at all. I mean that what I had to back up and see was that the evidence in my life was that something was wrong.

Something I was doing was seriously wrong or I would get better results. So this was the number one thing that I found that I had to learn to do. I had to be willing to do this. I had to have an an enough of an open mind, enough that brought me there by sheer logic to examine everything in my life. I did it with my job.

I after a period of time, putting forth my best efforts and, constantly having what I would call less than perfect results, I had just look at it and say, if if all these fine rules that I formulated for myself and I had an SOP for my department, a standard operating procedure, that single space was about to get sick and, by God, they followed it. Well, sometimes we weren't getting very good results. This again is a place where I had to look at the evidence. And I ask you to do urge you, suggest that you do the same. Whatever area in your life you feel that you this is it.

This is right. There can't be any flaw in this. I've gone all through this and I've arrived at this suggestion and this is the way it is. If the results that those convictions aren't, producing are not constructive, then I think somewhere along the line you have to back up and look at the evidence. Now, this leads into number 3.

A game that I find that I have to constantly play called Who's Who. Now, you'll remember when you were here for the 3rd if you were there for the 3rd meeting and we talked about this guilt and the anger and the fear that started as a child, as a very tiny child. And it's in our childish way we came up with this neurotic way to cope with it. If you will remember, we went that all of us had certain features of authority in common. There was always the mother, the father, the teachers, the relatives, the older brother or sister, some all of these people who shaped, who molded what we became.

And, well, we first learned to, quote, cope, unquote, was in this childhood environment. Now, the main thing that the neurotic does the thing that really he does all along until he finds out that he's doing it is he keeps reacting to the present as if it were happening to him in the past. In other words, everything that comes into his life he relates back to what he how he learned to cope with it as a child. So, therefore, he turns the major influential important figures of the present into corresponding figures from the past. Bosses become fathers.

Wives become mothers. Husbands become fathers. Our sons are rivals. So that we set up a drama and we keep dealing with these people not in the role that they really are, but in what we have found as a child we could cope with or we thought we could cope with. I turned every boss I ever had whether they were younger or older or what.

Dumber, smarter, or what. And I turned everyone I had tried to rather into my father. I never ever really was intent on anything except making the boss like me. Because, you see, if he liked me, that's like I tried to get dad to like me, then he'd take care of me. He would protect me.

He would see that things would be all right. So I was, I remember how I used to read about paternalistic government and think, oh, isn't that awful. That's bad. We should all be begging individuals and every man for himself. And here I was going around, you know, just seeking for fathers everywhere.

Every time they showed up they had on a pair of pants and looked halfway intelligent. There's a candidate. I did this with in other ways too and I'm sure that you have. But when you find yourself playing these games, when you find yourself sometimes treating those who are important to you in certain ways and that there is a certain undesirable results coming from it, sit down and think about it. And think do I look upon her as my wife or do I look upon her as my mother?

What am I trying to get her to be? In any close situation, which really makes the difference between whether you're going to function or whether you're not. I don't mean that every time you walk out on the street and get on the bus that you have to say to yourself who the hell is this? No. No.

No. If you walk into the elevator and you don't know them and you see all those funny thing going on, you have to think, I wonder who I turned that person into. It's the people that are in your very intimate the people that make the difference. The bosses, the children, the husbands, the wives, the lovers, the mistresses, etcetera, etcetera. They all have roles.

There's many a wife who's a daughter and many a mistress who's a mother and vice versa. Some of them are even sisters. Now, if you got those three things, let's move on to what I think really it's as far as I'm concerned. It's one of the things. I have to keep relearning it over and over and over.

This I got to keep relearning all of these things. That's what makes it interesting. And I've covered some of these before me and we'll tie them back in together now. Try to remember this one. Effort is everything.

From here on in I urge you to consider dropping from your vocabulary for all time. Phrases like best of my ability, all or nothing at all, and all that guilt that have their roots in this tyrannical need for perfection. I think, probably, there isn't any more serious stumbling block to recovery from serious neurotic tendencies than this remember one of the neurotic name was the need for infallibility. Another name for it is perfectionist complex. Is this insistence, this demand that anything in your life must be perfect.

You demand it of other people, you demand it of institutions, but above all you demanded of yourself. And this is founded in guilt. This awful feeling of unworthiness, this feeling that we are ourselves we have no man, no worth so, therefore, we don't dare be wrong, we don't dare be less than perfect. We have got to have it right. Yesterday morning I spent 2 hours with the priest that I took my 5th step with some 15 years ago.

I haven't seen him in a while. And I drove up. He's the, he's now the prefect of the of Saint John's Seminary at Camarillo. And I go up there and he and I spent 2 hours in his office and another half hour walking through the grounds. And when we got all finished, after all this time, he and I were in complete agreement.

It probably them still in me the most The biggest thing I have to constantly concern myself with is this stubborn, subtle, omnipresent struggle for perfection. The inability to accept myself as a fallible human being. That goes works in me constantly over and over and over again. And I was telling him how long time ago when one time when I was reading the New Testament I came across the phrase that when I don't remember now. I might be wrong.

But anyway, somebody asked Christ the master what he must do. And Christ drank him and sin said very simply take up your cross and follow me. And I said, am I right, father, in the assumption that I made then that the cross that Christ was referring to is the cross of our human nature? And he said, yes. As every theologian since from the very beginning has agreed on this.

This is what he's referring to. He wasn't referring to any great some kind of great burden, some kind of special thing he was going to give, some selective one to carry, some awful disease or or something like that. It was the cross of the day in and day out fallible human nature that you were to live with. And in learning to live with it be 10 times more at peace with the weakness within you than you are in this constant striving for perfection. You know, long before the well, I'm I should say long after the theologians, promulgated it.

All of the psychiatrists and psychologists agreed, that every man's greatest weaknesses are also his greatest strengths and vice versa. His greatest strengths become his greatest weaknesses. That's the way they work. So you cannot despise these weaknesses and you can't try to overcome them. Turn them around, properly regard them, and they become your greatest strength.

A knowledge of your own fallibility and acceptance of it, an unqualified acceptance of it is becomes the greatest strength and the greatest safeguard and the greatest force for stability in your life. The next one I call break the circle. Now the last time I tried to tell this about to somebody, discuss it with me, I finally saw that I was getting it up to them all wrong or else they were hearing it wrong because what they got in their head was that for the rest of their life they were gonna have to stand like a dumb ox while the human race rain blows upon their heads. I wouldn't do that for nobody. And I don't advise you to do it.

What I mean by breaking the circle and here again this applies to those situations in your life that really matter. You know, if you only see somebody about once every 2 years you don't have to worry about breaking the circle. You did that. It's broken. It's the day in and day out.

The close friend have to apply these these things daily. Now what I mean by this and it's so common, I I don't know. I've yet to find the the life situation of a person who's somewhere in this. It it doesn't exist. And that is the only thing I can call it is the dance of death that 2 people get into.

They get locked in this. And when one moves forward, the other moves forward. When one moves back, the other moves back. It's a dance. And they have to do it as they have to cooperate.

They don't look like they're cooperating, but they're cooperating and that's the funny part about it. This is what took me so long to see. Now, again, I'll I've had to illustrate it from, with a situation out of my own life It certainly brought to me and really drove me up a wall, but it did drop. In this kind of a situation, the roles are always unconsciously understood. Each one knows his own role and he plays it or else they don't have a dance.

See, somebody leads and somebody follows and there is a signal that is given when the dance is to begin and they go into it. Now with my boss which I had who I had a dance of death with for 9 years, we learned the steps real good. My role was the role of the humiliatee. He was had the role of the humiliator. Now, we had to react or we didn't have a dance.

And I'll tell you how it was done and I'm sure that you can now figure out where it goes in your life. Generally, these dances are done with audiences. Children, other coworkers, neighbors, good friends. It's much better when these dancers are performed with an audience because each one now can get his role in there. Now the way it happened with me was generally there was a conference.

It was always of course it could happen at any hour of the day or night but when we really did the dance at that step, when the symphony orchestra played back in the wings was during when there was a conference and there was some kind of a big important decision that had to be made and the humiliator, my boss sat there and we all trotted out our little wares and then would come my turn and the signal would be given. The signal would be given with something, well, let's see what Mac has. That was the signal. The the dance was gonna begin. Right away, got yes.

Yes. Okay. Strike up the music. Now then I gave my trotted out my wares. Always on the defensive.

Pushing, pushing, pushing, you know. This is the greatest. This is the finest. I've given this a lot of thought. I've prayed over it, you know.

And here it is and here it is and it's great. It's the only thing that can solve the problem. Next step in the dance. What the hell made you think that that would work? My turn.

Then we go into trotting at the mouth, denunciations, accusations of being misunderstood, accusations of not knowing what the situation was with the client, etcetera, etcetera. Now I always that always ended up the same. I always played right into his hand. The dance always had the same conclusion because I always ended up with with the paternal, the father said patted the sun on the head and said, you know, Meg, you're so emotional. You just can't take any kind of objective criticism.

It's true you have a certain amount of talent but God damn it, Max. You're going to have to learn to be an adult And then I would go away defeated. I had played my little role and he had played his and the dance had been danced. And then it never failed. We did this over and over and over again.

It finally when I saw that my role in the that the only way this circle was gonna be broken was that I would have to change my role. Now how do you change your role? He's the boss. Am I gonna be able to become the humiliator? No.

Not and stay around for a while. The only thing I could do was quit being the humiliatee and that's what I call breaking the circle because finally there came a day, I don't know how it ever happens that I I thought about it, I thought about it, I thought about it. Of course, I was doing a lot of work, spending a lot of money, doing a lot of praying, etcetera. But one day this situation, the signal was given, let's see what Mac has. The same old signal.

And this time, Mac who had also decided to put into effect what the next one we're gonna take up, the next one. Lady step out very matter of factly as though we've written a bunch of front of a bunch of people that he's never seen before. Now this takes a little bit of acting and takes a little bit of control and little things are going on in your stomach. And you might break out and sweat but it can be done. Now, came step number 2.

Whatever the hell do you think would make that work? I never saw anything like that in my life. What do you think of it guys? Well, time for my step. I said, Monty, you know, you may be right.

You know the account a lot better than I do. After all you're the regional manager. You were once the account supervisor on this account and I'm sure that you probably have a better judgment of this than the client himself. So I think you ought to make the decision whether or not it should be shown. And I left.

I wasn't humiliated. He had his dance right back in his left because he had to make the decision now. We had I had broken the circle. Now I had to do it again and again and again. But you know what happened?

If nobody dances with you when you get up to dance, you finally quit dancing. He finally got to where he quit getting up. He quit giving the signal and he found somebody else to take my place. They were all ready and willing and able to move in. Now, this leads to the next one and the name I've given to it is let the tailgater pass.

And the reason I've given that this name is I'm sure that any body, any alcoholic has been on the road when suddenly he becomes aware in the mirror that there's somebody right on his tail light. What is your let let's face it. What's your first reaction? You know damn well that they're all pissed. And if he goes over this way then you go over this way and then you go to him at this.

Both of you now rush pell mell toward destruction because he isn't going to get past you. Now, this is going back to that childhood thing of be better, be better, be better. Don't bring home just b's and c's. Bring home all a pluses. Don't let anybody get ahead.

The need to compete, the need to dominate, the need to how can you take the self same thing and turn it around? Now you're gonna think I'm cracked because I'm going against everything that we've ever been taught. I'm going against the precepts of our culture, the precepts of the great American dream. And I am telling you to consider this consider it hard. I am urging you to stop competing.

Let the tailgater pass. You're going to say, McGinnis, are you really standing up there supposed to be in possession of your senses and telling me not to compete in today's world, in today's society? That is exactly what I'm telling you to do because competing is the neurotic part of the activity. I'm not telling you to downgrade yourself. I am not telling you to employ your talents to the fullest.

I am not telling you to give everything that comes up in your work a day job or in any area of your life everything that you have to give it. I am telling you stop making it a do or die competition. I put this to the test. I put my money where my mind, I mean that literally. I put my job where my mouth is.

I put it to the test and I put it to the test in one of the most competitive businesses that's around. I think next to show business, advertising is just about as cutthroat as anything that I know of. As a matter of fact, knives in the back, they've discarded knives in the back, they use laser beams now. But I put it to the test. I stopped this competing.

I stopped this knife in the back. I stopped this constant put down and I'll tell you how it worked out. Sooner or later, your work is going to be judged by somebody who's not in the neurotic rat race with you. Sooner or later somebody who's not in this competition comes in on the ground, no matter how much bugle blowing the other guy has done, no matter how many knives, no matter how much he's put you down, no matter how much he's cut your throat, sooner or later the question, the product you've turned out, whatever you're doing, it's going to be evaluated by somebody who's not in that particular neurotic rat race. He may be in another one but he's not in that one and he'll be able to evaluate it.

And I tell you that good work, talent, ability, efficiency is so rare in this world that you don't need to worry about how good you are at cutting the other fellow down if you are good at what you do are reasonably adequate because the old saying that the path to the better mousetrap still holds true. And the funny part about it is you do better work. I found I did. When you get out of all of the energy, all of the thought, all of the time, all of the hatred, all of the thinking that you have to do, the resentments and the and the the staying up nights that you have to figure out how you can get ahead of that bastard. When you don't have to do that and can turn your energies and your talents around to the situation, to the question, to the problem, you do far, far better work and it's much more quickly recognized.

Any area of your life where you're in competition stop competing. Let the tailgater pass. Let him run on to his doom. You'll get there in time to see the ambulance taking him away. That's all you need to do.

The last one I'd like to tell you is, is the price right? Now this one, you don't play it very often, but boy, oh, boy, when the time comes, you really have to play it. Everything in life has a price tag. Success has a price tag, failure has a price tag. If you're going to stay sober, that has a price tag.

If If you're going to go down on Skid Row and drink for the rest of your life, that has a price tag. Somewhere along the line, you know, Mercury has a price tag, sin has a price tag, any everything. Everything has a little price tag on it and you have to pay it. You have to pay it. Somewhere along the line in your life in situations that really matter to you, you have to sit down one day and say can I afford to pay the price for that?

Do I want it? Do I want what it offers bad enough to pay the price tag that's on it? And then you're able to make a choice. Well, for instance, go back again to the situation that bugged me for so many years. I don't know how many times that over in this situation with my boss in the 9 years that it existed, I seriously considered leaving the agency and resigning and going and finding another job.

Now there were advantages on both alternatives. If I got out of this situation there was a we would assume the advantage of being out of the situation. The other drawback was that I had a great equity in this agency. I've been with them for years. I was a stockholder.

I had profit sharing and I had a severance agreement with them. Besides, I was a vice president. I had recognition with this company. And no matter where you go in the agency business, no matter what kind of a title you have hanging on to or your what kind of a proof of you take with you, you prove yourself wherever you go. You have prove yourself all over again.

It's like in the theater, how good was your last play? What was your last movie like? What billing did you get? Not did you win the Academy Award 5 years ago, what was the billing on your last picture? I had to sit down and make a choice.

I had to pay a price and this is where you weigh. You weigh what you want knowing that there's a price tag and You're gonna have to be willing. Believe me. I think the best definition that I can think of of emotional maturity is the ability to choose what you want to do, to make a choice as to what course of action you wish to follow. And then, the acceptance of the consequences that go with that choice.

The 2 are they they can't be separated. You can't make the choice and then refuse to pay the price tag. That's emotional immaturity. The 2 have to go together and that's what I think that's the name of the game really when you end up. The ability to live your life by saying I choose this course of action, I have waited, I know what the price tag is and now I am willing to pay whatever the tariff asks.

And once you've done that, then keep your mouth shut. You just make a bargain with yourself and you keep your mouth shut. You don't go through life every time anybody you can get anybody in a corner. Start this crying around about trying to have your cake and eat it too. If you if you play this game, you don't have to get on the telephone too often or, run around doing so much advice asking by saying, what do you think I should do?

Because, of course, what you're trying mainly to do in that situation is to get somebody to agree with a course of action that you have already decided to take and assure you that the price isn't there wasn't gonna be any price at all. You know? Everything's gonna be fine and you keep shopping around until you find this. And since somebody's always gonna think the way you do on any given moment and somebody is always gonna think the other way on any given moment, One day, you have to make up your own mind anyway. So you might as well decide that you're going to be happy on your own time or be unhappy on your own time.

There's no use getting anybody else in the act because 9 times you see, they don't have to pay the price, and they can give you all kinds of advice, but you're the only one who can choose. You're the only one who can pay the price. And now I like to end up here because I wanna save a little time for some questions with I'll give you a little secret. There's something really, really simple. It took me a long, long, long time to discover this.

If you want to take a giant step tonight toward peace of mind and hold on to it for the rest of your life, drop 2 words out of your thinking and out of your vocabulary. Never let them come past your lips again as long as you live. Now they'll come into your head, but you'll never let them be spoken again. And the two words are if only. This is the litany of the defeated.